herself an unprofitable servant, we, who can hear better that voice in
the silence, making little of rank, wealth, talent, and culture, and
much of faith, patience, and integrity, may be sure that it utters
benignantly,--"Well done!"
Rising, at last, Rue turned to Bergan, and made him a low, reverential
courtesy.
"Master Bergan," she asked, "have you any orders to give?"
Bergan started. There was a quiet significance in her tone and manner
that made his heart beat fast, for just one moment,--not with elation,
however, so much as with a heavy weight of responsibility; as if the
chill corpse, the crumbling Hall, the hundreds of negroes, the
far-stretching lands, and all the cares and complexities thereto
pertaining, had been suddenly flung on his shoulders. But the feeling
passed quickly; he remembered the will in favor of Carice, as well as
its fraudulent successor (which, he now bethought himself, it might be
impossible to nullify, even if he could bring himself to come in
conflict with Carice's husband); and the weight slid easily from his
shoulders, though not without leaving some correlative heaviness in his
heart.
Still there were orders to be given; and, until a more legitimate
authority or a closer relationship should supersede him, he, being on
the spot, must answer the immediate need of headship. He despatched
messengers, therefore, in various directions,--one to Godfrey Bergan to
apprise him that the long, bitter feud was ended, and between him and
the corpse of his brother there might be peace; another to Doctor Remy,
with a supplementary direction that if he was not to be found, Doctor
Gerrish should be summoned also; and a third to the undertaker, to
arrange for the sombre funeral paraphernalia. When all was done, he
was glad to retire for awhile to his room, leaving Rue, as she desired,
alone with her dead. Yes, hers,--no living person had so strong a
prescriptive right to that sad and tender vigil; no other love held the
sufficient warrant of such long and loyal service.
Bergan remembered, long afterward, just how she looked as he bade her
good night; standing, tall, gaunt, and erect, by the high,
old-fashioned bedstead, drawing the heavy curtains round the silent
dead with one hand, and extending the other toward him with a free and
lofty gesture that suggested the unveiling of a new and golden future.
"Good night, Master Bergan," said she, "or rather, good morning. For
you, the night is past, and the dawn is near. For you the Bergan star
shines bright in the morning sky; for you and the old Hall a new reign
of peace and prosperity is begun. Neglect not the warnings of the
past; rejoice in the promise of the future. God bless you, now and
evermore!"
The last words were spoken with a solemnity befitting a long farewell.
At the moment, a vague apprehension flitted across Bergan's mind; but,
looking back, he saw that she had seated herself quietly by the bed,
like one whose only purpose was to watch and wait. Besides, she had
spoken freely of the morrow's necessities and duties, and of her own
part in them; it was plain that she had no apprehension for herself,
and he might dismiss his fears.
In the hall, he was met by the solemn ticking of the tall old clock,
which some one had set in motion; probably with a vague idea that a
human soul's last minutes of time should be carefully measured, and the
moment of its entrance upon eternity definitely marked. He could not
help shivering at the sound. His mind involuntarily followed the
departed soul in its journeyings beyond the bounds of time, picturing
the heights or depths it had already reached, the scenes opened to its
awed vision, the momentous truths dawning upon its startled
comprehension. These thoughts not only accompanied him to his room,
but would not be shut out by the closing door.
Weary as he was, he had no disposition to sleep. He sat down by the
table, leaned his head on his hand, and gave himself up to sombre
reflections. The gloomy deathbed that he had just witnessed, the
emptiness and decay of the old ancestral home, the tangled questions of
right and expediency that might present themselves for decision at any
moment,--all these weighed heavily on his mind, and depressed his
spirits. For one moment he half forgot his rooted trust in an
overruling Providence, at once wise and tender, in the contemplation of
the chill chain of events that appeared to be tightening around him,
the seemingly mysterious fate that had twice compelled his return to
this dreary old dwelling,--tomb rather,--to experience some new phase
of sin or sorrow, after he had turned his back upon it, as he believed,
for many years, if not forever. No wonder the negroes thought it
haunted; its heavy, musty atmosphere was much better adapted for ghosts
to float about in than to be breathed into living lungs; it might well
be crowded with the spirits of his whole ancestry, to make it so
stifling!
He went to the window, to see if it were any better there. Scarcely.
The moon had vanished behind a cloud; the night was dim; the outside
air seemed not less burdened with woe and mystery than that within; he
even fancied that he heard light footsteps on the path below. He flung
himself again into his chair, and an almost superstitious awe stole
over him, a feeling that there was no such thing as emptiness, but only
invisibility,--that the air was teeming with mystic shapes, busily
tying circumstance to circumstance, cause to effect, motive to result,
and life to life, with cords of terrible strength and indestructibility.
_Cords_:--The word struck lightly on the sensitive chain of
association, and there was an instant response from the past;--"Holden
with the cords of his sins." No doubt that was the essential truth.
Strictly speaking, a separate act or an individual life was an
impossibility; each was bound to each by influence or consequence; sin,
especially, entailed its results upon a wide circle of inheritors,--the
sinner himself, his kindred, friends, neighbors, even his descendants
unto remote generations. Doubtless the sins of many old-time Bergans
had helped to twist the cords which had held the mansion of their pride
to so sad a period of desertion and decay, if not their scion to so
woful a death. With how many such cords was he himself holden, and to
what, and for how long?
He lifted his eyes with a start. A dim shadow had fallen on the floor;
something was intercepting the gray dawn-rays, which feebly lit the
room. He looked at the open window; it framed a slight graceful
figure, a wan, but lovely face,--both so well remembered, so fondly
loved, so mournfully lost! Of course, it was an apparition, a creation
of his own excited fancy, called forth to furnish another illustration
of the strange ramifications and knottings of those mystical cords, and
soon to disappear, and make way for some other sharer of his bonds.
And disappear it did; but with a sudden crash, and a startled cry of
"Bergan!"--neither of which had any touch of the supernatural. The
unexpected sounds at once his awe; he ran to the window, saw that the
rotten flooring of the upper piazza had broken down under some recent
weight, leaped the gap, flew down the steps, and found lying underneath
a motionless form and a lily-pale face, both half hidden in long,
flowing tresses. No apparition this, but a living, breathing
Carice,--or what had lately been such;--she looked deathlike enough now.
It may well be questioned whether love ever dies. It disappears from
sight, no doubt; it ceases to be felt as motive or end; the very heart
from whence it sprang believes that it is no more; perhaps a new--and
true--affection occupies its place and does its work. But is this
apparent death anything more than a partial decay, analogous to that by
which thousands of perennial plants seem annually to perish from the
face of the earth, under the frosts of autumn, but the roots of which,
nevertheless, carefully preserve their life-principle within, ready to
respond with swift springing verdure to the tender kisses and tears of
the springtime sun and rain? Is not all death only a sleep?
Bergan had striven conscientiously to destroy his love for Carice, as a
thing which, however innocent in its birth, had grown to be a sin. And
he had measurably succeeded. His worst heartache was over. Life had
ceased to look unattractive; if it did not promise happiness, it
offered plenty of work, and a sober well-being. He was beginning to
feel the beneficent operation of the law of change, to find that sorrow
was not meant to be the life-tenant of any human heart. If he had met
Carice under other circumstances, less calculated to throw him off his
guard, he would doubtless have approved himself master of the
situation; meeting her with calm cousinly courtesy and kindness, and
stifling only a momentary pang in his deep heart. But seeing her
thus,--pale, motionless, unconscious,--dying, perhaps, if not already
dead,--flung back at his feet, for sympathy and succor, by some
mysterious turn of the same tide of circumstance which had borne her
away,--a lost jewel, restored after many days,--it is scarcely to be
wondered at that, for one moment, as he knelt by the inanimate form, he
forgot all the sorrowful past in the anxiety of the present, and
touched the mute lips with the warm kiss of a love which, though long
repressed and slumbering, seemed now to have neither wasted nor died.
He soon recollected himself, however; when, seeing that Carice still
breathed, and was probably only stunned by her fall, he at once
addressed himself to the consideration of the serious question what was
to be done with her. She had fled suddenly, it would seem, led by some
wild, uncontrollable impulse; nothing shielded her from chill or from
observation but a nightdress and a light shawl; on one foot was a thin
slipper, the other was bare and bleeding; and her dishevelled hair fell
round her shoulders, some locks of which, he now noticed, were
encrimsoned by blood flowing from a deep cut in her head.
He glanced quickly round; the dawn was yet gray, there was no one astir
at the Hall, and probably not at Oakstead; unless she had been missed,
there was still time to save her from what, he knew, she would feel to
be worse than death, when fully restored to consciousness. He lifted
her in his arms--it went to his heart, even at that moment, to feel how
thin and light she was--and bore her swiftly to the door of her home.
There Mr. Bergan and Rosa met him; they had just discovered her
absence, but had not given the alarm; they were still too bewildered to
know precisely what steps should be taken for her recovery. Bergan
carried her to the library, and laid her on the sofa. As he did so,
she opened her eyes, turned from him to Mr. Bergan, and cried out, in a
voice of mingled entreaty and determination;--
"Father, I _cannot_ be Doctor Remy's wife!"
Bergan looked at his uncle with a mixture of surprise and apprehension.
"She is delirious," said he.
"No, thank God!" answered Mr. Bergan, with a look of ineffable relief
and gladness; "she is herself again--clothed and in her right mind."
PART FIFTH.
A BITTER HARVEST.
I.
A CLOUD FOR A COVERING.
The twelvemonth gone by had not passed lightly over Godfrey Bergan. He
was not the same man who had refused so peremptorily to listen to
Bergan, on that memorable eve of Carice's wedding. Not only had he
grown grayer and thinner, slower of gait and heavier of step; not only
were his shoulders bent and his head drooping; but his face wore an
expression of settled gravity, bordering on melancholy, and his manner
was gentle, almost to submissiveness. Since the night when he had
staggered into the cabin of the trusty Bruno, bending under the weight
of his dripping burden, he had never, in one sense, laid it down. The
thought that he had forced his daughter into a marriage so abhorrent to
her that she had been fain to escape from it through the awful door of
suicide, had never ceased to haunt his mind, and burden his heart and
his conscience.
It had not occurred to him that the fall from the bridge was
accidental, inasmuch as Rosa had deemed it her duty to keep inviolate
the secret of her young mistress's errand abroad on that night; he was
therefore unable to conjecture why Carice should have sought the
river-side at so inopportune an hour, except with a purpose of
self-destruction. Nor did it give him any comfort to reflect that her
mind must have been set all ajar, before she would have resorted to so
desperate an expedient; that only lifted the terrible responsibility
from her shoulders to lay it more crushingly on his own. It was he,
who, without giving her time to recover from the shock of Bergan's
apparent infidelity, or the fatigue and anxiety occasioned by his own
illness, had urged her into a union with a man for whom she
persistently asserted that she neither had, nor would ever be likely to
have, any warmer feeling than respect for his intellectual attainments,
and admiration for his professional skill and devotion. To be sure, he
had done it solely with a view to her happiness,--doing evil that good
might come, and finding too late that "Whatsoever a man soweth, that
shall he reap."
First, on that woful night, he had carried Carice to Bruno's cabin,
partly because it was nearer to the scene of the disaster, and partly
because he feared to encounter some lingering guest or indiscreet
servant, if he took her to the cottage. Fortunately, Bruno and his
wife were both within; and the latter immediately applied herself to
the work of restoration according to her lights; while the former was
dispatched, with suitable injunctions to be secret and expeditious, to
bring more efficient aid in the person of Doctor Remy.
It soon appeared that--thanks to her father's promptness--Carice had
sustained little injury from her immersion in the water; but, though
heart and lungs were quickly brought to resume their functions, her
senses remained fast locked in stupor. Knitting his brows, for a brief
space, over this unexpected complication, Doctor Remy betook himself to
a careful examination of the patient's head; and shortly announced that
he had discovered a severe contusion of the skull, implying more or
less serious injury to the brain.
The stupor would last hours--possibly days. Meanwhile, many appliances
and comforts which the cabin could not afford, would be demanded; he
therefore advised her immediate removal to the cottage. Mr. Bergan
hastened to break the distressing news to her mother, and to make sure
that the house and grounds were clear; then Carice was carefully placed
on a litter, and borne to her own room.
It was long before she showed any sign of consciousness, longer still
before she was free from the supervening fever and delirium, and
capable of coherent thought and expression. When that time came, it
was found that her memory of the past five months was a blank.
Bergan's unaccountable silence, her father's trying illness, Doctor
Remy's unacceptable suit, and the ill-starred marriage
ceremony--everything which had distressed her mind or wounded her
heart, had been completely wiped out of her recollection as by some
friendly, pitying hand; and she was carried back, all unconscious of
the transit, to the tender joy and blissful content with which she had
parted from Bergan. To her thought it was only a few days since he
went; yet, with a pleasant inconsequence, she was already beginning to
watch for his return. At first, she had seemed a little bewildered by
the change of season; it was amidst the flower and foliage of early
summer that Bergan had said good-bye; now, the deciduous trees stood
bare against the sky, and the flower-beds were shorn of their glory.
But her mind was too feeble to reason, and she soon accepted the fact,
as she did many another, without trying to account for it. Enough to
know that, winter being near, Bergan must be near also.
It may be noted as a curiously ironical turn of that blind Chance, or
Fate, in which Doctor Remy believed, that he was compelled, in his
professional capacity, to give orders that Carice should be carefully
humored, for the present, in this or any other delusion. There was
something at stake of far more importance, to him, than his personal
feelings as a man or a bridegroom--namely, the ownership of Bergan
Hall. In consideration of that, Carice must be spared everything
tending to excite or distress her, and indulged in whatever was
soothing to her mind, or pleasing to her fancy.
Meanwhile, he addressed himself, with renewed ardor and determination,
to the study of brain diseases. His attention had already been engaged
by the recently promulged theory of Gall, that each faculty of the mind
had its distinct location in the brain; and he was quick to see the
fine field thereby opened to pathological investigation. It was in
this direction that he hoped, some day, to make his name famous; and it
was chiefly as a means to this end that Bergan Hall was valuable in his
eyes. He wanted wealth in order to be able to devote himself
exclusively to the study of this branch of medical science, and to
pursue it, unhampered by considerations of expense, throughout the
books and manuscripts, the practitioners and patients, the hospitals
and asylums, the morgues and the dissecting-rooms, of the whole world.
Till he could do that, he must content himself with the one patient
whom circumstance had thrown into his hands.
But here, he was unexpectedly disappointed, in a measure. Whether it
were that enough of her recollection revived to associate him dimly
with anxiety and distress; or whether, her reason being in abeyance,
she was more controlled by her pure and delicate instincts; certain it
is, that Carice's fever no sooner left her, than she developed the most
unconquerable aversion to him, amounting in time to a degree of terror.
At his approach, she either hid her face, and trembled like an aspen
leaf, or she fled with cries of fright. And these moments of
excitement were followed by such alarming prostration, that Doctor Remy
was reluctantly compelled to admit the necessity of keeping out of her
sight. His investigations had thenceforth to be conducted through the
agency of her parents or of Rosa. Now and then, when she slept,--and
her sleep was always singularly profound, the very twin brother of
death,--he stole into her room, to acquaint himself with some
particular of the location, depth, or progress in healing, of the
injury to her head, and to satisfy himself of the state of her general
health.
To every one but Doctor Remy, Carice was gentleness itself. She was
happiness, too, in a touchingly quiet, dreamy, illogical form. She was
content to spend hours at the window, watching for the first glimpse of
Bergan, with a smile on her lips, and her eyes bright with eager
expectation; and though she sometimes sighed, when the day ended, and
he did not come, she was ready to begin the same hopeful watch on the
morrow, and never seemed to know how long it had lasted. As she grew
stronger, she resumed, in some measure, her old pursuits;--she busied
herself with light household tasks; she wrought dainty embroidery with
silks and worsteds; she read, chiefly poetry, the music of which seemed
to please her ear, without fatiguing her mind; she even noticed the
cloud on her father's brow, and made gentle war upon it,--conquering,
of course, as long as he was in her sight, and never suspecting how
heavily it settled back afterward. But all this time, the veil over
the past never lifted, nor was the eager watch for Bergan ever
abandoned.
The few intimate friends, or the servants not of the household, who saw
her occasionally, noticed nothing unusual about her, except the
delicacy and languor consequent upon a severe illness; Mrs. Bergan
being always present to turn the conversation away from every dangerous
point, and guide it through safe channels. To the rest of the world,
it was simply known that Carice had suddenly been stricken down, on her
wedding night, by a fever, supposed to be of the same nature as the one
which had lately prostrated her father; and that she was not yet
sufficiently strong to show herself abroad, or see much company at
home. Doctor Remy, meanwhile, came and went, and spent as much time at
the cottage as could reasonably be expected of a physician with a large
area of practice, and an office three miles away from his nominal home.
Not a person, outside of the limited household, supposed that he never
saw Carice, except when she was fast asleep, and totally unconscious of
his presence.
So the months rolled away, and the year drew near to its close. Doctor
Remy had prosecuted his abstruse study, by the dim light of the science
of that day, with characteristic energy and acuteness. He had slowly
felt his way, from the premise that each faculty of the mind had its
appropriate seat in the brain, to the conclusion that every local
injury or disease would affect mainly the faculty corresponding to the
injured or diseased portion, thereby not only indicating the seat of
the impaired faculty, but suggesting the possibility of a local remedy
for the local disturbance,--probably a delicate and difficult surgical
operation, to remove pus, slivers of bone, or other foreign matter
pressing upon, piercing, or otherwise irritating the sensitive cellular
tissue of the brain. Now, he only longed for an opportunity to test
his conclusions by experiment, and would certainly have attempted to
use Carice for this purpose, except that on her slender thread of life
hung his only chance of Bergan Hall. It would not do to sacrifice the
immense future advantage to the small immediate gain.
Nature, meanwhile, was laboring in her slow, gentle way, to effect the
same end contemplated by the doctor's science. With the beginning of
November, a change was observable in Carice. Her sweet face lost its
look of happy anticipation, and grew weary and anxious. There were
tokens that she was beginning to reason again, in a fitful, fragmentary
way, and to notice some of the many discrepancies between the facts and
the theories of her life; sometimes she put her hand to her head with a
piteous expression of doubt and bewilderment. By and by, she became
possessed of a spirit of restlessness by day, and of sleeplessness by
night; making the care of her--hitherto an easy and a pleasant task--a
sufficiently onerous charge. Thus it happened that she had made her
escape to the Hall, as heretofore narrated. Her night had been
restless, beyond all previous precedent, keeping Rosa constantly on the
watch. Toward dawn, she had fallen into a light slumber, during which
the weary attendant, sitting quietly by the bedside, had suddenly been
overcome by a profound sleep. Waking ere long, and not wishing to
disturb her tired maid, Carice stole softly to the window, to look out,
as usual, for Bergan's coming, and saw the light shining again from the
window of his room in the old Hall. The broken links in the chain of
association were stirred, if not reunited,--perhaps a dim reminiscence
of her former attempt to reach him woke within her,--she wrapped
herself in the first shawl that came to hand, thrust her feet into a
pair of slippers, and noiselessly made her way out of the house and
down to the river, exactly as she had done a year before. At the gap
in the foot-bridge, through which she had fallen, she stopped and put
her hand to her brow, in a momentary perplexity. Here, her memory of
the former expedition, which had led her thus far on her way, failed
her;--what was she to do next?
Lifting her eyes, she again caught sight of the light from the Hall,
which had recently been hidden by the trees. Her lips parted in a
smile; her hesitation was at an end. Clinging to the hand-rail of the
bridge, and sliding her feet carefully along the great beam underneath,
she safely passed the gap,--though she lost a slipper in the
transit,--and then hurried to the Hall, to meet with the accident
lately described.